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5 0 F ERNS OF NORTH AMERICA.
Dryopteris Noveboracensis, G r a y , Manual, ed. i., p . 6 3 0 . — D a r l in g to n ,
Flora Cestrica, cd. iii., p. 3 9 6 .
Nephrodium Noveboracense, D e s v a u x , Mém. Soc. Linn. (Paris), v i ., p. 2 5 7 .
— H o o k e r , S p . F i l , iv., p . 8 g . — H o o k e r & B a k e r , Syn. F i l ,
p. 2 6 7 .
Lastrea Noveboracensis, P r e s l , Tent. Pterid., p . 75-— J - Sm ith , Ferns, British
and Foreign, p. 1 5 3 .
Nephrodium thelypterioides, M ic h a u x , Flor. Bor. Am., ii., p. 2 6 7 .
Aspidium thelypterioides, S w a r t z , S y n . F il, p . 5 7 .
Aspidium Thelypteris, H o o k e r , Flor. Bor. Am., ii., p . 2 6 0 ; not of Swartz.
Var. SUAVEOLENS:— Fronds narrower, slightly more rigid,
very sweet-scented in drying ; the under surface copiously sprinkled
with minute glands.
H a b . •— In moist thickets and wet grassy places from New Brunswick,
Rev. J . F o w l e r ; and Canada to Virginia, C u r t is s . Also reported from
Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, and westward to Michigan and Wisconsin ;
but I have seen no specimens from those States. The variety was discovered
in Essex County, New York, and again near Glens Falls, by Mrs. L u cy
A. M il l in g to n .
D e s c r i p t i o n .— The root-stock of this fern is very slender,
scarcely two lines thick, and creeps just beneath the surface of the
ground several inches in advance of the growing fronds. The
newest portion is sometimes downy with fine yellowish wool, and
bears a few chaffy scales, which soon disappear. The older part
of the root-stock is more or less furrowed, and produces slender
branching roots. A transverse section cut at a distance from the
base of the stalks is irregular in shape, and consists of an outside
f e r n s o f NORTH AMERICA. 5 I
layer of hard dark-brown cells {sclerenchyma of Mettenius and
Sachs), and an interior mass of soft white parenchyma, through
which there extend variously shaped threads and bands of fibro-
vascular tissue, and at least one larger band of sclerenchyma also.
A section near the insertion of one of the stalks will show outside
of the cortical sclerenchyma a smaller mass of parenchyma traversed
by one or two little fibro-vascular threads, and a scanty covering
of sclerenchyma again outside of a ll Very few of our ferns
have been carefully studied with reference to the anatomy of the
root-stock, and I may say that in this direction there lies a broad
and interesting field for investigation.
The stalks which are to bear fronds in the year to come form
little stems near the growing extremity of the root-stock. The
stalks which support the fronds of the present year arc few in
number (two to four), and stand either close together, or some lines
apart, but always at some considerable distance from the end of
the root-stock. The stalks are commonly from four to six inches
high, slender, brownish straw-color; and only when very young
are they furnished with a few little chaffy scales near the base.
The fronds are from one to two feet long, and from three to
six inches broad. In outline they are lanceolate, tapering upward
to an acuminate and slender apex, and gradually contracted from
the middle downwards to a very narrow base. The pinnæ arc
from one and a half to three inches long, lanceolate, sometimes
slightly narrowed but more often a little enlarged at the base, pinnatifid
almost to the midrib, and with the apex slenderly acuminate.
Sometimes the pinnæ diverge from the rachis by an angle
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